


Exit Music

by Tea_and_Nightmarescapes (Anxious_Trickster)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brotherly Love, Daydreaming, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Five gets something nice for once, Gen, Hallucinations, Loneliness, Swearing, Time Travel, Touch-Starved, dead bodies, no beta we die like men, this is sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 18:34:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21306650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anxious_Trickster/pseuds/Tea_and_Nightmarescapes
Summary: What if the unthinkable happened?In that we found kindness in our stories, in that the heroes had been coming to save us all along,OrWhat if someone came to rescue little Number Five in the crumbling remains of the world?
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 27
Kudos: 378





	Exit Music

**Author's Note:**

> NOT a ship fic.

_ Sing.. us a song _

_ A song to keep us warm _

_ There's such a chill, such a chill _

Five whispers a song he once heard under his breath, a mournful thing. He doesn’t quite remember the melody but he remembers when he used to listen to songs with someone he knew, in a room full of gadget planes and astronomy books. 

Five lays on the ground, tracing the areas between where the stars should be, and not obfuscated by the smoke of the apocalypse. He wonders if Vincent Van Gogh used to do this - draw swirls in the night sky with his gaze, like Five does. He probably did it laying in lush fields of green, looking at unpolluted skies. Unlike Five does.

_ You can laugh _

_ A spineless laugh _

_ We hope your rules and wisdom choke you _

_ Now we are one in everlasting peace _

Someone clears their throat awkwardly, “Um. Hello! Come here often?”

Five sits up with a start. 

Standing before him is a vision of his brother Klaus. Not of the child he left behind, but the stranger he found in the rubble of the Academy with the rest of the deceased. Usually when Five sees figures they are far away, silhouettes whose only business is to wander in the distance. Five doesn't believe them to be ghosts, as nice and horrible as that would be. This hallucination is different from the others though. It’s close, it’s vivid.

Five stares. He can’t stop thinking about how comically clean Klaus’s clothes look in the campfire light. 

The Klaus shifts uncomfortably under his gaze, swinging his big suitcase slightly and rocking on his feet. He clears his throat, “Uhhhh...”

The noise snaps Five back into reality enough to spur him into action. Five scrambles back. To his horror it follows, dropping its suitcase and putting up its hands pleadingly. 

“Okay, sorry. Don’t freak out! Please don’t freak out, okay? I know I kinda just, appeared out of nowhere, but like, everything's good alright? _ Muy Bueno _.”

The hallucination comes with sound, they never make a sound, maybe it comes with pain too, Why does it look like Klaus? What does it want? What does the emptiness want with Five now?

Words. When was the last time he heard words? No, that’s not right, Delores talks to him all the time-

Five clamps his hands over his ears and squeezes his eyes shut, “GO AWAY! GO AWAY! KLAUS IS DEAD KLAUS IS DEADklausisdead.”

“Oh shit! I’m sorryI’msorry -Here, just feel my arm, okay?’

There is a long silence in which nothing happens. Five dares to look up. The Klaus is crouched down with his bare arm placed out in front of him, but makes no move to come closer. Klaus’s eyes shine with moisture and his eyebrows are pinched together. It’s all disgustingly sincere. 

Klaus offers up his arm as proof of his existence, and a sick part of Five wants to try and touch it. So he does.

“Feels real right?”

It’s warm, and it is solid, and it is solid enough to hold onto, and he’s holding onto it. Five studies every detail of the arm, and then the hand, and then the fingers, and the painted nails on the fingertips, like it’s his whole world. The prospect of looking back at Klaus face suddenly seems too overwhelming to bear. He keeps holding on though. Five looks up into the sky again, now too overwhelmed with looking at the hand. He realizes that he hasn’t said anything to Klaus in a while. 

“You know, all the smoke blocks out the moon and the stars at night. It gets very dark when the sun goes down.” Five says conversationally.

“Okay…” Klaus responds.

He pulls his hand away, “I’ve come to get you. I’ve come to bring you home.” 

“I don’t believe you, you’re a hallucination,” Five says calmly this time.

“Well tough shit kid, because this very _ un-hallucination-y person _ is taking you with them. And giving you a bath pronto! Whether you believe me or not.”

Five does not answer and makes no move to respond. He doesn’t see the point in arguing with the Klaus anymore. He knows better than to believe it.

With no acknowledgment, the figure that looks like his brother sighs and stands up to meander around Five’s camp, if the shuffling noises it’s feet are making are any indication.

It’s feet are making shuffling noises…

“Hey wh-” Klaus cuts himself off with a sharp inhale.

“Wait a second- Oh God, Oh _ God, _ those are bodies, _ fuck _.”

Klaus has apparently looked down into the valley below.

“Why are they so fresh?” Klaus’s voice is strained. If Five’s brother was an expert in anything, then it was how dead bodies were supposed to look.

“I could never figure out why they take so long to decay. Whatever caused the world to end, also killed off the decomposers I guess. Even the bacteria, explains why I haven’t gotten sick yet.”

“Oh Five,” Klaus’s voice cracks. “Oh Five, I never knew it was this bad. I knew, but I never _ knew _. Oh god.”

Klaus leans down and grips Five’s shoulders, and Five is forced to confront his eyes.

“How old are you Five?” He asks like it’s the most important question in the world. A few stray tears streak down Klaus’s face.

“Fifteen.”

He rears back as if Five had hit him.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come faster Five. God you’re young. You’re so young. I fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” and he’s now he’s sobbing. 

Five has never liked seeing his siblings cry, and on the off chance that this is truly Klaus, Five doesn’t want him to be crying.

“Did you come here all this way just to sight see? Or did you come to save my ass?” Oh well, Five was always shit at comforting people anyways.

But Klaus chokes on a watery laugh.

“You’re right, you’re always right, ha_ ha.” _

“So what do we need to do then?” Five brings himself to full height. Keep Klaus’s mind focused, this is his objective.

“You just have to hold my hand as I open the briefcase and we’re out of here.”

“It’s just that simple, huh?” Five thinks of the hours of equations and tears and despair. 

“Yes, just that simple.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Klaus breathes out.

“Can I bring Delores with?” Five feels his stomach turn at the idea of leaving behind his only friend. He picks her up and embraces her.

“Can you- Yes of course, _ haha _ of course Five. It would be a shame to leave behind such a nice lady after just meeting her after all.” Klaus gently shakes Delores's hand in greeting.

Klaus carries the suitcase over, and takes Five’s hand, weaving their fingers together with a wobbly smile.

And suddenly all at once, it hits Five. It knocks the breath out of him. This is real. This is truly real. He is going to leave this place, he is going to go home, _ this is real._

“On the count of three.” Klaus whispers. 

“One,” he squeezes Five’s hand.

“Two,” says Five feeling very small and quiet.

“**Three**.” They say together, and Klaus unlatches the suitcase. 

There is blue.

And there is nothing. Just for a moment.

And then...

* * *

Five has had this daydream a thousand times before.

The one where he finds the right combination of numbers. It turns out the right formula had been right under his nose all along, how silly of him. He cuts through time and space easily, and arrives perfectly on the Academy doorstep, just in time before everyone goes to bed for the night. He heads inside his home, and when his siblings see him, they all rush down with big grins on their faces, tears on their cheeks, and they hug him, and they tell him how much they’ve missed him.

Sometimes he spends most of his day in that daydream. Sometimes it’s too painful to think about.

But no daydream looks like this. 

The light from the lampposts diffuse softly, the movements of cars and pedestrians flit across his vision on all sides. The sound of crickets is deafening, and the smell; everything smells fresher than he remembers it ever being.

And just a few blocks away he spots the Academy, where his family lives, in so much more detail than his mind could conjure.

“So, what do you think?” Klaus asks, turning to Five, who is looking up at the sky once more.

“I think the stars look beautiful tonight Klaus.”

**Author's Note:**

> Decided to take a thing I wrote for discord a thousand years ago, and actually turn it into a story.
> 
> I’m baccckkkk! Finally getting back to writing again, and still loving TUA as much as I always do.
> 
> I hope y’all have a lovely day.


End file.
